Arms race goes ballistic
Trials of new Russian long-range rockets began in late summer. Soviet scientists seem to have learned enough about the unpredictable behaviour of these weapons to control them, and they are now forming the prototype for the first intercontinental ballistic missiles, accurate to within about 12 miles.
Meanwhile, the US long-range weapons programme revolves around the 5000-mile-range Atlas missile. One was first fired a few weeks ago but had to be destroyed when it strayed off course. The Russian announcement therefore puts the Soviet Union a short neck ahead of the US in the race to develop weapons capable of reaching into the heart of each other鈥檚 territory. Previously, only strategic long-range nuclear bombers could reach opposition airspace, but some form of ground-to-air defence against these planes was always possible. Missile warheads, however, arrive at 20 times the speed of sound, or about 15,000 miles per hour, and so are obviously far more difficult to halt than relatively slow-moving aeroplanes.
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So the emphasis is now switching to defensive missiles capable of intercepting these ballistic monsters at the peak of their flight, when they are between 600 and 800 miles above the Earth and flying relatively slowly. The US is developing two types of anti-missile missile as well as long-range radar that might extend the present warning radius from hundreds to thousands of miles, so giving the defence system a margin of up to 15 minutes in which to go into action.
Ballistic weapons create so much disturbance in the atmosphere during flight that they present a reasonably trackable target, but even so, the time and effort it will to take to design a defence system fast enough to catch them is probably going to be even greater than that which has gone into the development of the ballistic missiles themselves.
From The New 杏吧原创, 5 September 1957
